Developer is at the centre of happening trends: IBM's Prashant Pradhan

For Big Blue IBM, the developer is king. With decision-making in startups and organisations increasingly being shouldered by developers and with the growing influence of artificial intelligence, it has become important for technology behemoths like IBM to take developers seriously.

ET's J Vignesh caught up with Prashant Pradhan, executive director, IBM Watson & Cloud, IBM India/South Asia on the sidelines of The Great Indian Developer Summit in Bengaluru, to discuss developers' role in the current innovation scenario.

What is your view of the present innovation scenario?

The developer is at the centre of the trends that are happening. On one hand, we have really valuable data coming at a rapid pace from all verticals, different industries. As more digitisation happens, this will only accelerate.

Second, the big problems - the high impact things that AI (artificial intelligence) can enable. For developers to be able to innovate and crack those problems, you basically need the right kind of platform. Your ability to innovate increases, if you have the same AI that enables large projects.

Why are developers so important?

One of the things that is clear to us is ­­ the innovation that is possible with AI - it can never come from one single entity.

There are many angles; first is purely in terms of unleashing in novation, bringing that innovation back to our clients, helping the community by offering them the enter prise connect and finally (getting) the developer as the strategist (of the startup). If you look at all of these, it is obvious that developers are at the centre.

Which startup domains are you seeing traction from?

The initial interest has been across certain domains -skills, talent management and education has really seen a lot of interesting adoption. People are using Watson (IBM's cognitive system) to look at resumes and soft as well as hard skills and trying to match the demand side.

Second is skilling - what is a personalised pathway for you to excel best in a given field. In healthcare, startups are looking at neonatal intensive care for babies. Startups in the IoT space too (are looking at this). There are horizontals too, like chatbots. We are starting to see interest in the retail segment.

What about competition from other big corporates who are trying to attract the same developers?

I do not look at it this way. Whoever adds more value is where they (the developers) will rally around. It is not to look at competition or counter ideas. We think we are uniquely positioned.

We need to stay true to the value we can add. In the end, the developers will make their own choice. It is a fair game.If they see value in what we offer, they will come.

What is the future of this collaboration?

Going forward, it will become systemic. We need to be continuously in the lifecycle of the developer. You are there are as a constant support. My vision of the future is to make sure we are embedded in the entire journey.

How integral is India in IBM's scheme of things?

India is recognised globally in IBM as one of the most important geographies. A lot of problems we have here - AI was built for it - crunched on expertise, (on a) very big scale. On top of that - there are classic issues - education, law, healthcare, etc.

In all these, we have to scale expertise. India is absolutely at the centre of everything we do. It is extremely important. (India has the) Best developers, available skills, lots of data, problems... marry them together and it is obvious that India is important.